Adventures of Caine and Kerrigan Part Three Family is Forever
by Phoebe Darling
Summary: Horatio Caine finds out that he has a half-sister. He never knew about her. The first time that he finds out about her is when she reaches out for help. He saves her but who did it. His sister is strong and too stubborn for her own good. She is a Marine which gets NCIS involved. Multiple attempts are made on her life. When the dust settles they go to New Orleans to help a friend.
1. Chapter: Renee's Chance

Renee was finally able to move back into her house. The one that she had not seen since she was abducted and tortured. Horatio and his team had been able to rebuild her shot up house once her case was closed.

By sheer accident, the team found the secret entrance to her armory and indoor shooting range. Eric was standing just inside the den when he noticed something out of place.

One of the books in a built-in bookshelf was sticking out a bit. The book was Wyatt Earp (Life Behind the Legend). So he pushed it back to where it is supposed to be. When Eric pushes the book back, Ryan leans against the middle segment of the built-in bookshelf. The built-in was on the other side of the room.

When Ryan leaned up against the shelf, it slid back a little. The team pushes the shelf back further to reveal a hidden spiral staircase.

Curious, the team walked down the stairs to a small hallway with two doors on opposite sides of the hall.

Walking through the left door, Calleigh was floored. The room was an indoor shooting range that was soundproof. Renee's indoor shooting range went from one end of the house to the other.

The door on the right side of the hall led to a room that housed Renee's firearms collection. Her gun collection was impressive enough to make any gun enthusiast envious.

The collection was easily the biggest one that Calleigh had ever seen. It contained Sig's, Winchesters, Colts, Remingtons, a Barrett 50 cal, and Beretta's as well as an M40A sniper rifle.

Those were among a vast variety of common all the way to super rare firearms. Calleigh was beyond impressed when she found out that Renee had an SSK .950 JDJ. That firearm is also known as the world's largest centerfire rifle ever made.

She had .22LR, .357, 38 specials, 40 Smith and Wesson, 45ACP, 45 Magnum, 50AE, 30-.06 Springfield, 50BMG, 50BMG armor-piercing, 50BMG armor-piercing incendiary rounds, and 50BMG armor-piercing incendiary tracer rounds. Not to mention other rarer and less common ammunitions.

She even had .410, 4, 8, 10, 12, 16, 20, and 28 gauge shotguns. The shotguns fired birdshot, buckshot, and one-ounce slugs.

Calleigh thought to herself, "If my lab doesn't have a firearm, Renee certainly would have it."

Secretly Calleigh was jealous of the collection of firearms that Renee had procured.

Renee's house was a large two-story four-bedrooms, five-bathrooms, Mediterranean villa she bought since she was single and always on hazard pay she had saved up a large nest egg.

Her nest egg got bigger when she sold her mother's house and things upon her mother's death. Renee had sold all of her mother's things except her mother's Cherry red 1966 Ford Mustang convertible. That car was still in a storage unit in New Orleans. Renee was stationed there when her mother had died.

The house was large and very beautiful but also very lonely. She was glad that Horatio moved in for a while. He stayed with Renee when his house was being rebuilt from the drive-by shooting.

Her brother did not stay very long, but he encouraged Renee to invite James and Piper over. Renee would have them over often for either a game night or Sunday dinner. She had been seeing quite a bit of James and Piper since she had faked her death.

Renee would have the two of them over at least once a week for dinner and game night. She would often invite her brother to join in the fun. When she did, Horatio would always come.

During one of the many family game nights, Renee paired off with James while Piper had paired with Horatio. Renee had a lot of games to choose from.

Since it was Piper's turn to pick the game, the three adults already knew the game that she would choose. The young girl's favorite game to play was "Worst Case Scenario." According to Piper, that was the funniest game to play with Renee and

her dad.

The two battle seasoned Marines did have an advantage since both of them were survival experts. That fact worked as both an advantage and as a detriment. Some of the things that the game said were the correct answers Renee and James knew would actually kill you.

Since Piper was the one who chose the game, it was Renee and James turn to go first. James pulled a card out and handed it to Renee to read. The two of them needed to get Horatio and Piper to guess the wrong answer.

This question made that a lot easier than other cards. What the card said was the right answer was actually totally the wrong one. Based on the score, though, Horatio and Piper ended up beating the snot out of Renee and James.

Horatio loved teaming up with Piper since he saved the girl after she was shot.

When she was shot, her best friend found her bleeding at the bottom of four cargo containers. The girl was getting ready to take part in paintball wars with a group of her school friends.

One of her friend's father owned the paintball and gun range. James had saved her friend's father when they were both in Afghanistan. When they got back, Piper was given full access to the paintball half of the property.

The owner even put up a caged ladder all the way up to the top of the four cargo containers. That location was her favorite spot on the property.

Piper would be up there any chance that she got. She would often be up there when other groups would have a paintball war.

Piper would just crash other people's wars. When groups would get down to two players, she would go in full sniper mode. Taking both of the other people out with well-timed sniper hits.

That is why the property owner made her have bright fluorescent pink ammo so the others would know that her hits didn't count.

Before she was made to use identifying paintball ammo, the people would come in, and they were so confused as to who had won the battle since they both had clear hits on them.

When Renee went into the kitchen to bring out the homemade cherry pie, James got up to help her. This left Piper and Horatio alone to talk.

Piper motioned to Horatio that she wanted to tell him something, but she didn't want her dad or Renee to hear.

"I'm sure that you didn't pick up on it, but Renee's heart skipped a beat when dad touched her hand. I really think that Renee is falling for my dad," she tells her hero.

Horatio couldn't believe what he was hearing, but he did believe the girl. Piper was, in essence, a mute for a decade since she didn't talk from two and a half years old to just about seven months ago when Horatio was able to solve her mother's murder. She had become very intuitive to other's feelings and emotions.

Renee would call and invite James and Piper over all the time to just hang out or to swim in her pool. Piper loved going over to Renee's house and doing anything. On more than one occasion, she would invite her friends from both school and church over with her to swim at Renee's house.

Renee thought of herself as an unofficial aunt to Piper and would actively encourage Piper to bring her friends over all of the time.

Renee owed her life to James in more than one way, so she helped the single father whenever she could.

Pulling Piper to the side, Renee told the girl about how her daddy had saved her life.

"Your daddy saved my life more than once. The first time that he saved me was when he and the SEALs saved me after the Taliban had kidnapped me. I was only 21 years old, and your dad was only 22 years old. They captured me three months before, and they tortured me for information on the base and its sniper. The sniper was your dad. I never talked, and your daddy saved me. The second time nobody else knows about."

"I only saved you once. The second time you saved yourself," James tells Renee.

Nae gave him the if only you knew look. She goes on, telling the story.

"The second time that I was kidnapped, I fought my way back to base, but when your daddy told me that my canine partner Delta had been killed when he went to look for me, I was devastated. I went straight to the barracks that I had shared with Delta. I had my service pistol loaded and in my hands."

"The gun was to my head, and my finger was on the trigger when your daddy kicks down the door. That caused me to drop the gun. He never realized how close I was to being a statistic. Kicking down that door was my wake up call, and I got help. Meaning that I was sent home. Your daddy is the only reason that I'm here today."

That story was news to both James and Horatio.

James was the Marine sniper who was working with the SEAL's in finding Renee the first time that she was kidnapped back in Afghanistan. James was on base when Renee was kidnapped for the second time too.

The second time that she was taken, Renee thought that James and the SEAL's would come and save her, but she didn't know that James was ordered to stand down. Everyone else on base thought that Renee had left on her own accord.

James knew that Renee would never abandon her post or her canine. However, the base CO believed that Renee still blamed herself for the death of her last partner, Atlas.

When Renee was taken for the second time, she had been taken directly from the base. They had a suicide bomber that distracted everyone. Renee was taken when everyone else was preoccupied with the bomber. The only one on base who was realized that Renee was being taken was her canine partner, Delta. The military working canine was barking like crazy, and nobody was paying any attention.

As the dust settled on base, James realized that Renee was nowhere to be found. Delta was very distraught and looking everywhere for his partner.

James told the base commander his fears but was immediately told to stand down and to give her time. She had probably left on her own due to blaming herself for Atlas getting killed.

After Renee had been gone for a month, James let Delta out after he put a GPS tracker on the dog's collar. Renee had taught Delta to listen to James as an emergency backup, but she really had hoped the training would never actually be needed.

When James let Delta out, he gave the dog a shirt of Renee's with the command, "seek." The canine took off, looking for his partner. James had the other tracker and was keeping an eye on where the canine was at all times.

The dog had gotten very far from the base. When the dog's GPS didn't move for hours, James got a bad feeling. Getting some of there buddies to go with, him they out that found Delta had been shot and killed.

James never told anyone that he was the one who had let Delta out, but he blamed himself on Delta's death. When he saw Renee walking back onto base five months after she had disappeared, he was so happy that she was alive.

James had been right the entire time, and when Renee came back alive, the base commander had a lot to answer for. The base CO was eventually relieved from duty as the bases commanding officer. Based on James' testimony and his own admissions, the CO was court-martialed on the charge of dereliction of duty.

After a while in captivity, Renee knew that nobody was coming to save her. If she was going to survive, she would have to save herself.

Renee was going to need to figure a way to fight her way out since nobody was coming to her rescue. She would have to bide her time and first figure out where the hell she was.

After her captors were finished torturing, her they threw her on the ground of a dark tunnel deep into the underground network. As she lay on the ground with her hands tied behind her and feet tied, Renee noticed a large glass shard that she managed to conceal in her hands.

After her captors had left her alone, she cut herself free, using the glass shard as a knife. Once freed, she just needed to wait until her captors came back to torture her again.

When they came in, she grabbed the first person that came through the door. Renee needed a shield to protect herself. Once the person was in her arms, she ended up having a firearm at her disposal.

Holding the shard of glass at her hostage's throat, she started to press down almost cutting the person's throat. Renee's hostage was the group's leader so, she did have some leverage, just not a lot. Having some leverage, she had to tread carefully.

Her hostage told his subordinates to stand down temporarily, and this bought her some valuable time. Renee's gun that she now had was an AK-47, which had a lot of ammo.

Having near perfect aim, she didn't need that much ammo but was glad that she did. She knew that she was going to need to really fight her way out so, she was going to need to start to kill her captors in order to escape.

Renee thrust the glass shard deep into her captor's stomach and left it in there. Pulling the gun out of his hands before she pushed him towards the other captors.

With their attention diverted by their boss being stabbed, Renee started to shoot her way out. Firing her way through the long and massively underground labyrinth-like tunnel network.

Renee didn't know if she was going further and further into the network or if she was actually heading outside where she wanted to go. Every time that she heard sounds heading towards her, she would go all sniper mode and dive for cover.

With her nearly perfect aim, she shot and killed everyone that came around until she heard no more movement in the tunnel.

By some miracle, she had shot all of her captors. Leaving everyone either bleeding or outright dead. Renee was eventually able to find her way out of the tunnel network.

Once out of the network, Renee needed to get to higher ground. She needed to figure out where the hell she was being held. Getting to the top of the nearby mountains, she was able to determine that she was about forty kilometers or kliks away from her base. If she was going to make it home, she would need more ammo.

With all of her captors dead or dying, she went back to grab five more gun magazines. While she was at it, she also grabbed a pair of night vision goggles that she had seen one of her captors wearing. Knowing it would take her a while to get back to base, she also grabbed two canteens for water.

Considering that the sun was just rising, she had time to make a run for it. Grabbing a local map, it was now or never. Renee could read and speak both Dari and Pashto nearly fluently, so she was able to read the local map.

She had learned the local languages during her previous four tours of duty. Having a mind for languages, it was easy for her to learn them. By that time in her life, Renee had learned four languages before she became a Marine.

Renee was already fluent in French, Spanish, Farsi, and Russian. She was a linguistic genius since she just needed to spend a little time immersed in a language to learn it. Her mother was a French teacher at the local university and only spoke French at home. Renee's first language that she learned to speak besides English was French.

Living in South East, Texas Renee learned Spanish from classmates and the community. Farsi and Russian she learned in high school. By the time she was fifteen years old, she already spoke four languages besides English.

Using the map for guidance, she was able to make her way back to base just as the sun was setting the next day. Renee had managed to walk the 24.85 miles with armed terrorists on her six. Walking onto the base, only one person ran out to help her.

James was not only the first person to help a beaten and tortured Renee, but he was also the only one who wanted to look for her. James knew that there was no way that Renee would just abandon her post or her canine Delta.

James confessed to Renee that he let Delta out to go look for her. Renee trusted James when he told her that the canine stopped eating and was actually doing self-harm. James had developed a close bond with Renee through the years of being deployed together in a war zone. Knowing each other since she was 18 years old and he was 19 years old.

Renee was there when James's wife was raped and killed years before. He was even there both times that Renee had been kidnapped.

She understood why James did what he did and kept his secret. She never told anyone what he had told her. James was at the time the closest thing to a brother Renee had known. She was even there for him when his wife had been killed. At the time, it would have been six years before.

From the time that they first met in the states to getting sent to Afghanistan, the pair had been through hell and back. They trusted each other with their lives.


	2. Chapter: Piper and Renee

Chapter: 3

Piper and Renee

That trust is why James still trusted Renee with the most important person in his life. He trusted her with his daughter to watch the girl when he went out on missions and away for training.

Piper and the dogs would just play all day. Echo loved having someone to play with since Renee had stopped being an MDPD canine officer and had returned to the Marines.

The canine would go with Renee and was used as a demo dog. She was now the head canine trainer at the local Marine Base. Echo had seen more action then a lot of the Marine canines had, but since she was not a Belgian Malinois, she would never be a USMC canine.

The dog did miss the action of being an active duty working canine. Renee was also the Marine Mounted Color Guard trainer. This allowed her to put both of her passions to good use. This also brought her back to the BLM horse auctions. That was where she would buy the new mounts for the Color Guard.

Considering they were United States Marines Mounted Color Guards, Renee figured what better breed to represent the USA in parades and shows than the original United States Mustang.

Renee had been back with the Marines for about a month. James asked her if she would be willing to watch Piper while he went on a training mission for a few days. That was a request that she could not deny. She simply adored Piper, and Piper loved both Renee and the dogs.

The mission went by without a hitch. James had got home early, so he rushed to Renee's house. Renee had told him that there was no need to knock and just to come in, so he did.

It was about 10 pm on a Friday night. Renee had just finished tucking Piper in her own bedroom at Renee's for the night. When out of nowhere, Echo let out a low warning growl.

Renee looked to her canine partner for security and for a lot of things, actually. Echo quickly ran downstairs and jumped up on James's legs in a very eager fashion.

Echo was all wiggles and tail wags. She wanted her ears scratched by her new friend. James obliged and scratched the police canine's ears.

Slowly coming down the stairs as quietly as she could since Renee didn't want to wake Piper. Whenever Piper stayed at Renee's Charlie, her retired Marine canine partner wanted to be with the girl at all times.

Renee didn't mind Charlie being with Piper since the girl couldn't get enough of the dog. The two of them had become inseparable by this time.

Renee walked over to the couch. Patting the seat next to her, "Come sit down, how was the mission?" she asked her fellow Marine.

James knew that Renee had the clearance to hear about the mission since Renee had gone back to the Marines after her attack. She was also still available for the Miami-Dade Police Department to use should the need arise.

"It was just a routine training mission where I was teaching the new sniper recruits good target identification."

James got up to go to the kitchen to grab a cold bottle of Long Board Ale. "Is it just me, or are the recruits getting younger and younger every year?"

Walking back into the living room, James looks up and realizes that his fellow Marine was already curled up on the couch. She had actually fallen asleep.

This fellow Marine knew more about Renee and her past than just about anyone, even her brother Horatio.

Knowing that Renee only slept two to four hours every night, and even then only sleeping for one hour at a time. James didn't want to wake her up, so he was just going to let her sleep and let his daughter sleep upstairs.

James just sat on the couch next to Renee and watched her sleep. Gently he pulled one of the throw blankets up and over her shoulders. James didn't think that anything was any different until he looked at his watch.

Renee had been asleep by that time for six hours with no night terrors or twitching at all.

Renee had never been able to sleep that long with no interruptions of terrors or twitching during the entire time that James had known Renee. By then, it would have been nineteen years.

Knowing that it was very early in the morning, only 4:00 A.M. James didn't want to call Horatio to come and help James with his sister.

He quietly turned on the TV and clicked ZNN on. Sitting down, he wanted to be near Renee. Keeping the volume down, he quietly watched the news. Needing to make sure that she was okay and be there if she needed any help.

Renee didn't move an inch or make any noise during that entire night. James was worried whether or not Renee was even alive. He would often lean close in order to watch her breathing just to be sure that she was alive.

By this time, it was 6:00 A.M, so James felt comfortable with calling Horatio to come over to check on Renee.

On the complete other side of town, Horatio's phone rang. Looking at his phone's caller ID, he noticed that it was James. Seeing James' name, his senses were going into overdrive.

"James, is Renee okay?" he asked their mutual friend.

"She's fine, at least I think that she is okay. I came home early and got to her house at ten last night. Well, we were talking, and I went into the kitchen to get a beer."

"Coming back into the living room only to find Renee asleep on the couch. I was going to let her sleep her normal amount of time, but she was still asleep eight hours later. In fact, she is still asleep on the couch right now."

"Renee had zero night terror's or twitching episodes last night and has just been quietly snoring away. To be perfectly honest, I am getting worried she is sick or something. Can you come to Renee's house and see if she is okay."

When Horatio heard what James was saying, he jumped up and got ready to drive over to his sister's house. By this time, Horatio had memorized the route to Renee's house to memory. It only took Horatio about ten minutes to drive to his sister's house.

Quickly getting to his sister's house, he rushed inside to check on his sister. Walking into the living room, Horatio stopped in his tracks. He could clearly hear his sister quietly snoring. He could see her breathing, but he had no idea why she would still be asleep after eight hours of sleep.

Before Horatio goes to wake his sister up, he pulls James over to the side and asks him a very important question.

"Did she take anything? Could she have taken a drug of any kind?"

James was confused but answered Horatio's question, "No, I left her alone for less than two minutes. She was only alone while I ran into the kitchen to grab a beer. I came right back in and popped the top in the living room. She was asleep when I got in the living room. We were just talking, and she looked and sounded fine."

Both her military personnel file and her MDPD personnel file would show that she never slept more than two to four hours a night and only sleeping one hour at a time, but she had clearly slept at the time eight hours in a row.

He only had one thought as to why, but he kept it to himself, not wanting to start anything if he was wrong. Analyzing the scene quickly, he approached the form of his sleeping sister and gently placed his hand on her arm.

"Nae... Nae... sweetheart… time to wake up. You slept for eight full hours. Are you feeling okay? You had us scared for a bit," whispering to her. He didn't want to scare her at all.

Renee looks at her brother, blinking then at James. "Wait, I slept all night. Are you both sure? I haven't done that since my second deployment with the Marines before my first kidnapping."

She had no idea why, but Renee just felt safe enough to relax whenever James was around.

Not long after she watched Piper, Renee asked James and Piper if they would watch Charlie while Renee and Horatio took Echo on a road trip to pick up the new puppy.

She knew that Charlie was too old to enjoy a road trip. Renee knew that Charlie would love to stay with Piper since the dog adored the girl.


	3. Chapter: Charlie the Wonder Dog

Chapter: 4

Charlie the Wonder Dog

Charlie more than deserved a break from everything. Charlie herself was awarded three Lois Pope K-9 Medal of Courage. She actually earned two of them in one tour of duty. That tour was Renee's fourth tour of duty.

The first was when Charlie and Renee were pinned down with some other Marines. Their position was under fire by some insurgents. The bullets were coming from a covered position down at the group of Marines. James was among the other Marines, but he was not able to get a lead on the terrorists who were shooting at the group.

Renee had given Charlie the command to return to base to bring reinforcements. Partway to base, the canine turned around. Seeing her partner in danger, the canine flanked the insurgents. Diving into the gun turret, the canine attacked the shooters.

Charlie was wearing her bulletproof vest but was stabbed repeatedly through the vest. Ignoring her stab wounds, she took out two terrorists. A third terrorist jumps out of the turret in an attempt to escape the canine.

From Renee's position, she had a clear shot of the terrorist. She was the only one with a clear shot, so she took it. The terrorist dropped dead, and the air was silent. Renee was shot three times by the shooter before she was able to take the shot that killed the terrorist.

James and the rest of the surviving Marines investigated the gun turret and found Charlie lying there seriously injured with several deep stab wounds. Renee and Charlie were both carried back to base by the Marines.

The second time the canine earned the Lois Pope Medal of Courage was also during their fourth deployment.

This time Renee was also awarded a Bronze Star for her bravery. Late one night, Charlie was awakened by a noise. Renee didn't hear the initial noise. She just saw Charlie's reaction to the noise.

Renee trusted the canine, so she grabbed her service pistol and opened the door to her room. The canine darted out before Renee could grab the collar.

Into the darkness, the canine charged. Armed with nothing but a Sig Sauer and a flashlight, Renee raced into the darkness to help her partner. It didn't take too long for Renee to find Charlie with a suicide bomber in her mouth. The two of them just had to get the bomber away from the barracks.

He was close enough to take out the whole barracks. Over a hundred soldiers were sleeping inside. Renee grabbed the bomber from behind him, and Charlie had the hand with the dead mans switch in it. With the canine's mouth around the hand, the bomber was unable to open it.

The two were able to get the bomber far enough from the barracks. The other soldiers were safe if the bomb went off.

Renee ordered Charlie to release and get back, but the canine refused. Together the two war seasoned Marines push the bomber hard getting him as far as they could so that Renee can shot him before he blew himself up.

Renee and Charlie needed to dive for cover before the bomb went off. When it goes off, the two were seriously injured with a lot of shrapnel.

Their teamwork and bond with each other worked wonders. Their bravery and courage had saved a lot of soldiers that night. James O'Shea was in the barracks sleeping.

Immediately following the explosion James and the rest of the sleeping soldiers rush out to see what happened. James was the first to find Renee and Charlie. Renee was unconscious with shrapnel in her head and chest. Charlie had dragged herself over to Renee and put her body between her partner and the bomber's body.

Renee barely survived and had shrapnel left in her skull. It was more dangerous to remove the shrapnel then to just leave it in. Eventually, the surgeons removed the shrapnel when Renee had been beaten in Miami six months earlier. Charlie had some shrapnel in her chest, but she was also still wearing her bulletproof vest at the time, so she was not as seriously injured as her partner.

As far as Renee was concerned, Charlie was the real hero, not her. The rest of the base and its commanding officers were of the opposite side, and they all thought Renee deserved the Bronze Star along with Charlie deserving the Lois Pope K-9 Medal of Courage for her action on both occasions.

She had contacted Echo's breeder about getting a puppy to teach Forensic evidence detection too. The breeder contacted Renee and told her that the puppy was ready to go home.

Renee could have the pup flown over, but she had a few people that she wanted to visit in both her home town and at the Marine base near New Orleans that she was stationed at.

The road trip with her brother was going smoothly until they had just about arrived at their destination.


	4. Chapter: Renee's Hero Goes Down

While driving down to New Orleans to pick up the little puppy for Horatio and his CSI team. The pup was going to be the newest member of the team. Renee got a phone call that hit her like a kick in the stomach.

The woman on the other end told her that the mare that had saved her life when Renee was fourteen years old had been severely injured and was going to be put down due to the injury that she had sustained.

Renee was devastated, so she quickly tells her brother that they needed to make a detour so that Renee could be there for the mare that she owed her life too.

While driving to the farm, Renee told her brother about the mare and what she had done for Renee when she was just a kid.

"When I was eleven, my mom took me to a mustang auction, and I was able to buy a yearling black and white paint filly. I named her Sierra Rose. I was going to train her by myself. I formed a close bond with Sierra. Three years later, the two of us were going on a trail ride. Being in South East Texas, you never go trail riding solo without a good hunting rifle.

Out of nowhere, a cougar jumps out and starts to attack the two of us. Sierra could have reared and thrown me to save herself. Most boy horses would have just thrown me and not given it a second thought."

"Sierra didn't throw me, but she rather fought the big cat. I was eventually was able to get my rifle out and kill that big cat. I own that mare my life."

The twenty-seven-year-old mare was injured when she had fallen in the pasture that she was in. The fall had broken her shoulder in the process. The break could not be repaired, so the mare was going to be euthanized soon.

Horatio drives his sister to a beautiful farm just outside of Renee's hometown in South East Texas. Where the black and white mustang paint lived in blissful retirement.

The mare she had served the Border for five years and the NOPD for nine years before she was retired to a farm. Renee paid for the mare to be sent from New Orleans back to her hometown when the time came for the horse to retire.

Renee had a very close friend from elementary school who agreed to keep Sierra at her farm until the mare died.

Renee was devastated at the news of the mare's injury and prognosis. Gently stroking the mare's neck and speaking softly to her when the vet gave her the first of the two drugs used to euthanize horses.

When the mare went down, she laid her head in Renee's lap. Between the tears falling down Renee's face, she leaned in to whisper something in the mare's ear.

"Thank you, you saved my life, and I was able to keep you from suffering. I love you. You are a good girl now go and run free in the green meadows of heaven until I come and find you," she tells the mare when the mare breathes her last breath.

That mare and Renee had been together since Renee was eleven years old.

She bought the mare when the horse was only a year old fresh from the plains of Texas, where she was rounded up along with her whole herd of wild mustangs. Renee bought the filly along with another colt from the same herd to train. Renee could remember vividly the fight that was in the filly.

Nobody could get near her until little Renee walked into the pen, and the filly just calmly walked right up to her. The auction just gave her the baby since nobody could get near her.

This was the start of Renee's long line of training horses for the Border Patrol along with other military and Law Enforcement agencies.

The jet black colt Renee sold when it was three years old, and she kept the filly. Renee never wanted to sell the mare after the horse had saved her life. However, Renee was forced to sell the mare when she joined the Marines.

She was only able to sell the mare to the Border Patrol on the condition that they called her when the horse was going to be retired so that she could come and get the mare since she didn't want anything to happen to the horse that saved her life.

Renee was in Afghanistan when the horse was being retired, so she called a close friend who agreed to drive the mare to her other friend's farm. She had not seen the mare for about two years. Renee did stop by to visit when she moved from Texas to Miami.

Renee was worried that the mare would not remember her, but that fear was erased when the mare let out a loud whinny as soon as she smelled Renee.

When the mare passed away, Renee asked her friend if she still had the mares only foal. About fifteen years ago, between her second and third tour of duty, Renee had bred the mare to Peppy San Badger, a stallion from the famed King Ranch.

Sierra was at the time retired from the border after five years. Getting called back before the foal was born, she sends Sierra to NOPD after the foal was born. Her friend agreed to buy the baby from Renee. Sierra served NOPD for eight years. Retiring when she was 22 years old.

Her friend told Renee that she indeed did still have the colt.

"If you want to ride Starre, just say the word. I will have him tacked up before you can say anything."

"If it is ok with you, I would prefer to tack him up myself for old times sake."

A request that her friend could not deny.

Renee walked into Starre's stall. She stopped to just marvel at the horse. Renee hadn't seen the horse for years. Sierra's foal was a gorgeous grullo colt.

Renee's ride went very smoothly for the first hour of trail riding. Then without warning, the gelding reared followed quickly by a buck so high it threw Renee into a protruding rock hard enough to knock the wind out of her.

Quickly coughing in an attempt to catch her breath. Renee noticed that she was having difficulty breathing but just thought that it was because she had gotten the wind knocked out of her.

Wiping off her pants and checking herself for any external injuries, she remounts Starre and rides back to the barn at a gallop.

Considering that she rode out at a walk and galloped back, it only took her about fifteen to twenty minutes to get back. Renee was by now having a very hard time breathing, but she never said anything.

Renee proceeds to untack Starre and brush him off before leaving the farm with Echo and her brother.

Horatio and Renee went from the farm directly to the NCIS office in New Orleans to help out a friend of Gibbs. It took the pair four hours and forty-five minutes to get to New Orleans. After four hours and forty-five minutes in the car, Renee was barely able to breathe.


	5. Chapter: Gibbs Calls in a Favor

Driving out to New Orleans, Gibbs called in a favor from Horatio and Renee. Telling his friends that there was a human trafficker and drug smuggler who had evaded capture by using the bayou to disappear in.

The other police and federal canines have been unable to follow the trail over the water. Gibbs, however, knew that Echo could track over water since she had done it over the vast Florida Everglades on multiple cases.

Gibbs had told Pride that he knew the only person who would be able to track the suspect over the water. Pride was not so sure about what Gibbs had told him about Renee

Pride thought to himself, "No one could survive what this woman has gone through." However, when he read both her MDPD personnel file and her unredacted military file, he was convinced.

Asking several NOPD mounted officers about the name of the person who trained their horses, the answer was the same from both officers.

"Marine Staff Sergeant Renee Kerrigan trained these mounts along with four other mounts. Her horses are often sold between different agencies. We had to fight other officers to get our hands on one of her horses. Why do you ask Pride."

"Apparently Sergeant Kerrigan is coming with her police canine from Miami to help us track that human trafficker and drug smuggler. You know the one that has been terrorizing the area."

When the officers heard that they begged to help with the case, they wanted to meet this officer. Renee was a legend from where the mounted officers were concerned.

Pride could use all the help that he could get, but Gibbs had told him about the prices that Renee had on her head, so he told the over-eager officers that he would get back to them when he found out more information.

Finally, arriving at the NCIS office, Renee was almost completely unable to breathe, but she would never say anything to her brother. Renee and Horatio meet Pride at the NCIS field office to discuss the ongoing case.

With Pride accompanying them to the NCIS coroner Dr. Loretta Wade's office, they all walked in and introduced themselves to each other.

Renee had brought Echo inside to get a smell of the victim so the dog could track where the victim had been to find out where he was killed, hopefully.

The victim was identified as NAVY Commander Jeff Mancini. While at the morgue, Renee felt a strange tightening around her chest, but she thought nothing of it. She was still taking short, shallow breaths since she had been thrown by her friend's horse.

About five minutes later, during the conversation, Renee had started to feel lightheaded, so she finally tells her brother and the two new friends, "I can't breathe... I can't..." she then promptly dropped straight onto the floor, knocking the tray of Loretta's over, causing all of her autopsy tools to go flying. Horatio and Pride quickly get to Renee's side.

Pride and Horatio turn her over to face them since she had landed on her stomach.

"Nae... Nae... Sweetheart come on open your eyes," Horatio pleads with his sister.

While Horatio begged his sister to wake up, Pride checks her for a Carotid pulse. Placing his index finger and middle finger over her Carotid Artery, he feels for a heartbeat.

Gently placing his hand on Horatio's shoulder, he shakes his head no when Horatio looks at him with pleading eyes.

The two of them quickly pick her up and lay her down on an empty table for Dr. Wade to cut off Renee's shirt to allow better access when the doctor attempted to restart Renee's heart using the portable defibrillator that was in the morgue.

After several failed attempts, Dr. Wade has to tell Horatio that his sister was dead.

Horatio was not willing to accept that since his sister had been declared dead before but fought her way back to the land of the living. He asked for some alone time with his sister's body to say goodbye.

When he was alone with his sister, he grabbed a scalpel from Dr. Wade's autopsy tray. Quickly he hollowed out a pen, so it was just a tube. He was going to try something he had seen one of the paramedics do to his sister when she was shot in the lungs by a sniper a few months before.

He wordlessly makes a deep incision between his sister's second and third ribs. The cut was deep enough to allow him to put the hollowed out pen in her chest cavity. At that precise moment, before he has a chance to get the pen into the incision that he had just made Dr. Wade and Pride walk in.

Seeing someone cutting into one of her patients, Dr. Wade tells Pride, " Get that man away from my body. He's probably not even related. Why else would someone cut into my dead body."

With Pride trying desperately to pull him away, Horatio barely manages to put the hollowed out pen into the incision. When he does, the whole room clearly hears a loud hiss of air.

Hearing the trapped air escaping, Dr. Wade quickly grabs the defibrillator to shock Renee's heart. After one shock at two hundred fifty joules, her heart quickly responded by beating on its own.

When someone has a collapsed lung air escapes the lung. Sometimes it escapes from a hole or a tear in the lung tissue. In Renee's case, it was a microscopic tear that resulted in a slow leak.

The escaping air is trapped in the space around the lung in the chest cavity. Eventually, the pressure that the trapped air causes will collapse the other lung and finally crush the heart.

When Horatio put the hollowed out pen in the incision, it allowed the trapped air an escape route allowing her lungs and heart to function relatively normally.

Quietly Dr. Wade asked Horatio how he knew Renee had a collapsed lung. He responded quietly and quickly.

"I didn't know for sure, but my sister has a long of history of lung injuries. She was shot in the lung a few months ago and suffered from a collapsed lung. I had noticed that her clothes were dirtier when she got back from her horseback ride, but she didn't tell me why, so I just thought maybe she fell and hit her chest and lungs. She would never tell me she got hurt. I guess that she did."

Wade drives Horatio and Renee to the hospital. The pen was only going to work for a little bit of time. Renee needed to have the damage to her lungs repaired. She stayed at the hospital for a few days.

When Renee was admitted to the hospital, she talked to her doctor privately.

"Five and a half hours ago, I was thrown from my friend's horse and landed hard into a sharp rock. Could that have been when I collapsed my lung."

"Can it have taken five and a half hours for both lungs to collapse."

"I was sitting in the car having a hard time breathing. I went to NCIS HQ then the morgue. About five minutes after we got there, I felt a tightening in my chest. Five minutes after that, I felt light-headed. The last thing I remember was telling my brother that I can't breathe."

The doctor quickly answered his patient's questions. "Your lung received a micro tear when you fell. It took five and a half hours for the pressure to build to a point where it collapsed your left lung. That was when you felt a tightening in your chest. That was your left lung collapsing. Your right lung collapsed five minutes after your left one did. As your right lung collapsed, it also crushed your heart. You're lucky that your brother tried to do what he saw another doctor do to you. You are lucky that he noticed your clothes were dirtier when you got back from your trail ride."

With Renee in the hospital, the team of NCIS officers and. Horatio, with the help of Pride and his team needed to work the case without her assistance. Patton was a big help tracing the various cell phone towers that the victim's phone had pinged off of in the time around his death.

Renee was quickly released from the hospital to return to the case. She was, however, advised not to let her heart rate or her breathing get elevated for about two weeks.

The doctors knew Renee since the base that she was stationed at when she was stateside between her five tours of duty was near New Orleans. Renee was known all around the area as an excellent horse and canine trainer.

The paint horse that saved her life was sold from the Border Patrol to the New Orleans Mounted Division. When she was sent back to the states, she was reunited with both Charlie and Sierra.

Charlie was given to her since the dog would not listen to anyone else. Renee tried hard to get the dog bonded to a new handler, but the dog refused to listen to anyone but her. When Renee was released from the Marines, Charlie was allowed to retire.

The pair then transferred to the Border Patrol to keep the homeland safe. Renee and Charlie were unstoppable, so the drug cartels wanted them both dead. Renee still had active hits out on her since she joined the Marines in the first place.


	6. Chapter: Renee Does Something Stupid

As soon as Renee was released, she brought Echo down to where the victim's body was found. She wanted at least to attempt to follow the trail and try to find where he was actually killed. The team knew that the victim was killed somewhere else since there was not enough blood at the scene to cause a person to die.

Echo had managed to track the scent of the Navy Commander, who was found dead earlier to the compound Renee was at. Renee and the team needed more proof than Echo's nose to nail the suspect.

Renee was never one to sit back and wait for anything, so she went by herself to gather intel when Horatio asked his sister where she was off to she blatantly lied to her brother and to Pride telling the two men.

"I'm going to hang out with some old friends. We will be getting drinks," she tells her brother, walking out quickly.

In reality, she was going to gather intel on the suspect. To do this, Renee goes on a solo and unsanctioned mission to take photos and videos of the suspect. Renee was hopeful that she would be able to get some pictures or videos of suspect moving drugs and people.

Renee had driven her dark green Ford F-350 Super Duty XLT truck down a dead-end road about one and a half miles from the suspect's compound.

Quickly and quietly, she put her swimsuit on and shoved her clothes into her dry bag. The camera, knife, and her sidearm and back up weapon were already inside the bag.

Walking to the edge of the bayou, she slides her swim fins on. Placing her full face snorkel mask on her head, she takes a slow, steady but deep breath and dips under the water. The full face mask allowed Renee to swim undetected by only requiring her to get the tip of the built-in snorkel to the top of the water.

Being the star athlete on her high school surf team, she trained herself to hold her breath for ten minutes. Renee would take a deep breath and go back under the water. It only took her about fifteen minutes to swim to the compound.

Getting to dry land, Renee was quickly dressed in her black Stryker 5 11 cargo pants, navy Cotton t-shirt, and black combat boots. Pulling her clothes out of her dry bag, she strapped her Sig Sauer P-226 chambered in .357's to her left hip. She quickly got to a place inside the large compound. Thinking that she could see the whole compound at once.

Renee's only camera that she was actually using was a tiny spy cam that just took videos. She also used a digital camera, so if she got caught, the suspect would not know that the photos on the camera are decoys. What she got was very damning for the suspect.

However, Renee never heard the sentry behind her. She had no idea he was there until she felt the steel barrel of a rifle on the back of her head.

"Freeze, put your hands up and get on your feet," the sentry orders Renee.

With the barrel of the gun against her head, Renee had no choice but to obey. The sentry then tells Renee to take out her phone and drop in on the ground. She does as she was told.

Then the sentry tells her to take out her gun and to remove the gun's magazine. Following that order with telling her to throw the magazine as far as she could. Finishing it by telling her to drop her gun on the ground and kick it to him.

Renee did everything just as she was told complete with removing the magazine from her gun, dropping her Sig, and kicking it over to the sentry.

When the sentry reached down to grab her gun, Renee charged him, knocking him flat on his back. Picking up her gun and firing it at the sentry, hitting him in the chest. The sentry gave her a totally shocked look.

Whispering to her before he succumbed to his injury, "What… How… you removed the gun's magazine?" A question that she answered quickly.

"I always have a bullet in the chamber. You never had me clear the chamber."

The gunshot, however, got every sentry on patrol in the compound to rush over to where she was. The one that she had just killed had her remove the gun's magazine and throw it far, so Renee was out of ammo.

Hearing the other sentries approaching, she tries to find some kind of cover. Looking around her frantically for anywhere that she could use to hide in.

Before she has a chance to get to a safe location, someone comes up behind her and hits her in the head with the butt end of the rifle, causing her to fall to the ground leaving a small pool of blood and obvious signs of a struggle. In the struggle, Renee's phone gets kicked into the grass, meaning she has no way of being tracked.

The next thing that Renee rememberers is that she was handcuffed to a chair with the suspect asking her questions. "What are you doing here? Who are you? Who do you work for?"

Before she has a chance to answer any of the questions, one of his subordinates whispers in his ear.

"Bitch is a cop. I saw her going in and out of the NCIS headquarters in New Orleans multiple times."

Now the suspect needed to get rid of her where she would never be found. With only a silent nod to his subordinates, Renee felt a sting on her neck. Then everything goes black.

Renee gets buried alive when the drug dealer and human trafficker decided to get rid of her. The suspect chose to bury her in a car. Placing her in the trunk, he leaves her for dead. He did throw her dry bag with her knife, and Kimber Micro back up side arm inside of it into the trunk with her.

However, he did keep her Sig Sauer with him. She did come too after what she thought was four hours. Based on the size of the trunk, Renee estimated that she was running out of oxygen.

There was no way for her to know, but her brother had called the friends that she had told him she was going out with. Her friends had no idea what he was talking about. They didn't know that she was even in the area.

Worried that his sister had gone and done something stupid, Horatio asks Pride if he knew someone who could ping his sister's phone. He needed to find where his little sister was.

Patton was easily able to trace her phone. They had found her phone hidden in the grass at the back of the suspect's compound. Getting to the location that her phone was pinging at Horatio found where his sister was caught. Seeing the pool of blood and obvious signs of a struggle, his heart sank. His fears were found to be valid.

With the phone being found in the grass, Horatio feared that they would never be able to find her. At that moment, he remembered the GPS watch that Renee had. The watch that had saved her life eight months ago when Horatio had just found out that she was his baby sister.

She had sent him a message that had her GPS watch that she needed him to trace. He still had the message on his phone, so he gave it to Patton to trace. He and Pride's team were not that far from Renee distance-wise, but they were four hours behind her time-wise.

Patton was able to pinpoint the location of Renee's watch to within five feet. When Horatio, Pride, and his team finally got to the location, Renee was really running out of oxygen. From where Horatio and Pride were standing, there was no sign that showed that Renee was even there.

Horatio had brought Echo with him knowing that the dog would easily be able to track her partner to wherever she was. He just asked the police canine where her partner was, and the dog started smelling the ground searching for his sister.

The team that Horatio was working with was new to him, so he was not sure that Patton had correctly traced the GPS. Echo, however, let out a low growl, then she feverishly began digging in the recently disturbed ground.

Horatio thought that his sister had been buried, so he started to dig where Echo was digging. Seeing Horatio and the police dog digging in the same location, Pride went to join them in digging in the same area.

Suddenly without warning, the dog stopped digging and jumped up on Horatio.

Echo's jump had caused Horatio to tumble quite a ways from where they were digging. With Horatio far away from the site the canine turned on a dime and did the same thing to Pride, the canine managed to get the seasoned agent and CSI Investigator clear of the site, but why since her partner was buried below them.

By now, Horatio knew better than to doubt the canine and what she smelled. He knew that there was something going on, and he trusted the dog and her senses, so he yells at Pride, "Stop stay back Echo smells something. We need to keep clear until we find out what she smells."

Less than thirty seconds later, the ground where the two officers had been digging at exploded. What the pair didn't know was that Renee had a backup plan and was attempting to escape.

Underground, Renee had managed to get out of the car's trunk and into the main area of the car.

She knew that she was going to have to work fast if she was going to survive. Renee knew enough about airbags that she was able to take apart the car's airbags.

Removing the car's front seat headrests, she was able to redirect the explosive force that inflates them. When that was done, the force was strong enough to shatter the window and blow a hole to the surface.

There was no way for Renee to know, but Echo had cleared the area above her. The police canine was made it safe for Renee to blow the airbags. When she used her Swiss Army knife that she always kept in her back pocket, it triggered an explosive blowing a large hole in the ground and shattering the window.

Crawling up out of the hole that was just made, she emerged from her supposed coffin unscathed. Somehow she managed to do all that while maintaining a slow heart rate. She remembered what her doctor told her about her need to keep a slow heart rate and breathing rate since her collapsed lung.

Renee was never one to do what her doctors told her, but she thought that maybe she should listen this time. Considering that she that last time she was told to keep her heart rate and breath rate low but didn't she collapsed. The fall caused her to slam her head into a marble table. In fact, she was declared dead after she had hit her head, but she fought her way back to the land of the living.

Getting to the top, she immediately recognized her brother and Pride. She, however, did not recognize the three other NCIS agents that were there. Hannah, Gregorio, and Sebastian were new to her.

Everyone, there was beyond impressed with what Renee had managed to do. If they had not seen it with their own eyes, none of the team, including Horatio, would not have believed what they saw.

Looking down into the fresh hole, Gregorio casually says to the other two agents, "That woman could definitely think on her feet. Who else would be that calm in that kind of situation?"

"What other woman would be able to clear her mind and come up with the plan she came up with and follow it through to a successful end as Renee had done." The other agents could not argue with what LaSalle had said.

Getting to the top of the crater that Renee just blew into the ground, she loses consciousness from lack of oxygen. She had managed to get out of the car on sheer adrenaline, but when that passed, she falls down unconscious. Horatio and the team of NCIS agents rush to her side.

Feeling for a Carotid pulse Horatio was relieved that Renee was still alive. His baby sister just passed out.

Patting her cheeks and gently shaking his sister awake, "Nae… Nae… Come on, open your eyes… Wake up, Sweetheart."

When she opened her eyes, her brother smiled. His ocean blue eye's met her icy blue eyes.

Winking at her, he tells her, "You have to stop doing this to yourself, sweetheart."

Thinking back about the last few hours, Renee realized just how lucky she was. Telling her brother, "I'm sorry, H, I have a bad habit of acting first and not thinking about what I am doing."

Pride looks at her and grins. "You had us scared. You can certainly think on your feet. How did you know how to do that. You know blowing a hole through a car window."

A question that Renee did have a quick answer, "That… I learned the hard way. It's a long story, so I'll tell you a little later."


	7. Chapter: Evidence of Things Unseen

Chapter: 9

Evidence of Things Unseen

It took a few minutes of laying down on the ground for Renee to be able to walk again without getting dizzy. Jumping back into the hole, she had blown into the ground. She needed to get back into the car to grab her dry bag. All of her evidence was hidden in a secret compartment she had sowed in the bottom.

Pulling out the dry bag, she was met with five very confused faces. Her brother and the entire team of NCIS agents were not sure why she would need to go back into the car she had just blown up. The team didn't realize that the blast was a directed explosion meaning that it went in a single direction. It had left the rest of the car totally untouched.

Pulling the bag out of the car, Renee dumped it out to get to the bottom of the bag. Taking out the dive knife that Gibbs had given her since the knife was also in the bag.

Using her Swiss Army knife, Renee needed to rip out the seam in order to get the remote WiFi-enabled hard drive that Renee had sowed into the liner.

Her spy camera saved the photos and videos remotely, so it didn't have an SD card in it. It did need the hard drive to be near it to save the photos and videos.

Her camera was a very small one that Renee had managed to hide on her shirt. The evidence that she had gathered on the suspect was shocking, to say the least. Renee had managed to get photos and videos that were very damning.

Photos included evidence that he was moving not only people and drugs, but he also moved guns too. Some of the videos showed him moving the ingredients needed to manufacture C-4, TATP, and PETN on mass quantities. All of those compounds were highly explosive.

The gun shipments included M16's, prima-cord, detonators, blasting caps, AK-47's, one hundred round drum clips, and massive ammunition crates. He also was transporting and manufacturing Cocaine, Methamphetamine, Heroin, Fentanyl, and Carfentanil. He was even into the human trafficking of women and young girls.

When Renee gave the evidence to Patton, he was able to use facial recognition on the women and young girls that the suspect was moving.

Shockingly Patton was able to link one of the young women to the victim. One of the victims of human trafficking was the victim's younger sister.

Her name was Sabrina Mancini. The victim Jeff Mancini was the caregiver of the young woman. Their parents were killed when they were younger.

When Jeff joined the Navy, he had left his sister with a family friend. His sister was just shy of seventeen years old, and nobody had filed a missing person report since the family friend had been arrested for drug possession and was currently serving time in NOPD jail.

The evidence showed that the young woman was still alive, but that is probably why the victim was killed. Renee had been able to get the suspect to confess to killing the victim.

The suspect was not aware that it was being recorded since Renee had a hidden microphone sewed in her shirt. The mic was so small it was not found when she was getting patted down by the suspect's subordinates. The suspect confessed after Renee had been dosed with some kind of drug.

Renee had told Horatio and the NCIS agents that she didn't need to go to the hospital, but her brother insisted on it.

Arriving at the hospital, Horatio tells the nurse, "My sister passed out after escaping from a buried car. She had told me that she remembers getting stuck with something but had no memory of anything that happened between getting stuck and when she woke up in the trunk of the car." Asking the nurse to rush a toxicology report. Horatio had to know what kind of drug his baby sister was dosed with.

It took a few hours for the toxicology report to come in. Apparently, his sister was dosed with Ketamine, which is known as a very powerful horse tranquilizer.

Renee was released from the hospital after the toxicology report came in. While Renee was in the hospital, Patton traced all of the victim's movements before he was killed. The victim was strangled by a garrote.

The evidence that Renee had gathered was enough to get a search warrant. It covered the complete property that was owned by the suspect. Dr. Wade suspects that the tool which was used to kill the victim was a length of steel wire since she had found tiny pieces of steel in the deep cut in his throat.

Horatio's sister insisted on going with the NCIS agents to search the property. Getting to the property, they found a boat on fire, and the property cleared out. Pride and his team were able to extinguish the boat fire before the boat sank.

The fire destroyed most of the evidence but not a large amount of blood that was on the floor. Blood tests from the middle of the blood pool proved that that blood was from the victim.

The team had found where the victim was killed but not how he was killed or by who. They also needed to find out how the body got from the place he was killed to where he was found five miles away.

Pride and his team really needed to find the suspect who had again used the bayou to disappear. By now, the entire NCIS office was getting tired of this person always being one step ahead. The team was going to have to get one step ahead of the suspect, but how?

Pride and his team were all very impressed with how well Renee and Echo worked together. Pride being a Louisiana native, knew that Echo was part Catahoula Leopard Dog.

Catahoula's bond with one person and tend to be wary of strangers, but Echo was also part Rhodesian Ridgeback, and that breed is friendlier than the Catahoula. Pride couldn't think of a better crossbreed for police work. He had never met a police canine that was cross-trained over so many fields.

Renee had trained both Echo and Charlie across multiple disciplines. Both dogs could detect drugs, firearms, arson, explosives, currency, people, cadaver, and search and rescue. They were also well trained in the traditional patrol and apprehension. Pride and his team were impressed, but they still hadn't seen Echo actually do what she was trained to do.

So when Echo started to alert on something at the compound

Pride and his team were not aware of what Echo was alerting them too. Echo herself was pawing and barking at a duffel bag. The bag had been left in the middle of the compound.

In fact, if Renee and Horatio had not looked around to find where Echo had gone off to, they would have never found the massive explosives that the suspect had rigged to the entire building.

Seeing her canine alerting the way that the dog was Renee turned to the team and asked them how long Echo had been barking. She couldn't blame the team for not realizing that Echo was alerting since they didn't know the dog's alerts.

Renee and Horatio, however, knew that based on the level of desperation in the dog, it was an explosive with a timer. The dog could clearly hear the timer clicking away, and she was desperate to get her people to safety.

Renee walked up to Echo and tells the canine, "Show me."

A command that the dog very rapidly, quickly, and emphatically responded to. Pointing with her nose to the bag and the dog started to paw at the bag and bark incessantly. Since Renee didn't know what type of explosive it was, she pulled the dog back. Not wanting to accidentally set the explosive off with the moving of the bag.

Renee called out to her brother, who she knew was an explosives expert, "H, Echo says that there is an explosive in the bag. The dog alerted to a explosive that was on a timer." The dog will paw at timed devices but not bombs that are rigged.

Renee further explains that her brother can open the bag since the zipper was not rigged to explode.

When Horatio hears that there was an explosive, he tried to get the rest of the people to back up to a safe distance. He, however, knew his sister was not going anywhere. Renee did take Echo to a safe distance then told the dog to stay.

She was not willing to put the police canine's life in danger unless it was completely unavoidable and necessary. Pride stayed with Renee and Horatio, but he did order his team to back away.

Gregorio, however, was not going anywhere without Pride.

Telling her boss and friend, "Where you go… I go... If you are here… I'm here."

Pride was not happy about it, but he also knew that there was no arguing Gregorio into listening to him.

Slowly and carefully, Horatio pulled back the zipper and opened the bag to get a better look at the explosive. Quickly realizing that he could disarm it with relative ease. He just needed to get the pin out. The pin was pushed into the Plastic Explosive, and it was connected to the timed detonator.

While Horatio was pulling out the pin, the team all hear a very loud beeping. Being the Miami's team explosives and arson expert, Horatio knew that he needed to get everyone in the building out now because it was going to blow, and he couldn't stop it.

"Everyone out! The bomb had a secondary trigger that I accidentally tripped when I pulled out the pin in the first explosive," Horatio yells at the team, all while pushing everyone to the door.

No sooner than he gets the building clear, they are knocked down by the concussive force of the explosion.

The team searched through the debris of what was left of the building. Horatio looks for the bomb's brains and anything connected to the explosive.

The team was having a hard time locating any forensic evidence of the bomb. Remembering that they had taught Echo to locate forensic evidence and explosives, Renee got an idea.

Bringing Echo into the rubble, she gave her canine the "seek" command and waited for the dog to get a hit on the odor. Echo didn't disappoint her partner. The canine found the bomb trigger and the rest of the bomb's brains within minutes. The team had been searching for hours but were unable to locate the pieces that they were looking for.

Pride and his team weren't even aware that you could train a canine to detect to forensic evidence in the first place.

The explosion meant that the team needed to start at square one. All of the possible evidence had gone up in smoke. Well, not quite all evidence, the boat that had the victim's blood in it was at a different location on the property than the building. The team stopped the boat from burning into the water when they had gotten to the property.

Horatio hoped and prayed that they would find enough evidence to get an arrest warrant on the suspect based on the evidence that was gathered from the boat.

The boat had a lot of blood, so the team took swabs of every single pool. They even took several swabs from different locations if it was a large pool. Hoping that by chance, the suspect got hurt and bled in the same location as the victim.

Since they suspect that a Garrote was used, it would not be beyond plausibility that whoever it was that killed the victim would have cut himself on the tool. They just needed to find what was used to kill the victim. The victim's blood and whoever it was that had killed him's DNA would be found on it.

On a hunch, Horatio grabs his sister. Pulling her to the side, he asks her, "Can Echo detect mixed evidence. Can she smell the victim's blood, and the unknown suspects DNA in the same item."

Quickly Renee tells her brother, "Echo can smell anything and detect anything. Has she not proven that already?"

Embarrassed, Horatio hangs his head and tells his sister, "Point taken."

Privately Renee thought to herself, "Even if we find the evidence, we still need to find the suspect. He has more than proven that he will do anything to keep doing what he was doing, including killing cops."

Renee would never tell her brother her fears, though. He needed to focus on the case and not on her fears.

Pride and the team were amazed at how effective the use of a canine had proven thus far.

Hannah and Gregorio had to go back to the NCIS headquarters. They needed to follow up on some leads on the location of the suspect. Patton was still running the faces of the trafficked women and girls through facial recognition.

When some of the victims were identified as Sabrina's best friends, Emily and Ivy, he was intrigued. How did the suspect manage to get three friends at the same time? Patton continued to work on finding the human trafficking victims that Renee had managed to video the suspect moving.

Sebastian was back at the morgue, working on the forensic evidence. This left Horatio, Renee, and Pride to look for more evidence in order to track the suspect through the bayou.

The suspect was really good at covering his tracks since no other law enforcement agencies have been able to track him.

With Patton at the home base, they were able to locate the suspect fairly quickly. Horatio and Renee were driving back from breakfast when they hear over the radio that their suspect had been spotted


	8. Chapter: Crashes and Headaches

Renee and Horatio are just driving her dark green F-350 XLT Super Duty through the French Quarter of New Orleans. When they hear through dispatch that the suspect of their sailor's homicide and the attempted murder of Renee had been spotted driving in their direction.

As the suspect drives past them in a black Jeep Patriot, the pair of police officers put on Renee's emergency siren, and they race after him.

Renee's truck easily overpowers the Jeep by pulling up next to it. She tries to run the Jeep off the road. When out of the corner of his eye, Horatio sees the driver side rear window go down.

Through all the years of police work, it tells him what was going to happen. Without fail, he sees the muzzle of an AR-15 sticking out of the window. Just as it dawns on Horatio, what he had just seen the pair hear rapid gunfire.

Bullets fly through the air shattering all of Renee's windows. One of the bullets hit Horatio in his right shoulder.

Seeing her brother get shot causes Renee for a split second to get distracted. Horatio falls forward from the force of the bullet.

Renee getting distracted causes her to slam into a parked vehicle. Hitting the vehicle at high speeds sends her truck airborne.

If her truck didn't have raisers and oversized tires put on aftermarket, she would have died on impact with the other vehicle. Instead her truck vaults off the side of the other vehicle and barrel rolls. The truck flips end over end, spinning out of control.

By this time, Horatio already hit his head on the side of the door. Her brother was knocked out. Eventually, Renee hit her head on the steering wheel, knocking her out.

When her truck eventually stops, it's endless flipping the airbags finally deploy. The force of the deploying airbags smashes into Renee's ribs, breaking several of them for at least a second time. When the airbag impacts with her lungs, it causes her left lung to partially collapse for a fourth time.

During the horrific crash, Renee's police radio button got jammed by a piece of shattered glass, so dispatch heard the whole thing. That was the best thing that could happen.

The dispatcher's voice manages to rouse Horatio, bringing him back to consciousness.

"Lieutenant Caine? Sergeant Kerrigan? What happened? Do you need an ambulance sent to your location?"

Opening his eyes, he quickly responds to the dispatcher's voice. "I think I'm ok." Glancing at his sister, he sees Renee slumped over the steering wheel. His sister has blood flowing from a fresh head wound.

"Nae… Nae… wake up… open your eyes…," he pleads with his sister.

Renee doesn't move or respond in any way.

"She's not conscious. You better send two ambulances to be safe," he finishes talking to the dispatcher.

Horatio has to get himself and his sister out of the truck since he can smell gasoline, and he can see flames licking at the rear doors of the truck. He is scared that the truck might blow up.

Unbuckling his seatbelt, he attempts to open his door. Finding it stuck, he pulls himself out of his shattered window.

Wincing with pain from his gunshot, he now has to get Renee out and away from the ticking time bomb that is her truck.

Reaching through the driver's side window, he pulls out the dive knife that his sister always kept in a thigh sheath on her left leg. This is one time that he was grateful that his baby sister is a lefty. With the seatbelt cut, Horatio slides the blade back into his sister's thigh sheath.

Cutting Renee's seatbelt, he pulls his sister clear of the wreckage just as the truck catches fire. Horatio manages to get the two of them out of harm's way just as his sister's truck explodes in a huge fireball.

Luckily Renee left Echo at the NCIS headquarters when she took her brother to her favorite beignet place, Café Beignet, for breakfast. The two of them were heading back to HQ when they hear that the suspect they were looking for was heading their direction.

Lying his sister on the ground, Horatio hears the ambulances approaching their location.

Horatio knows his sister needs the attention more than he does. So he hides his gunshot wound until his sister is taken care of. The first ambulance takes Renee to the hospital.

With his sister safely inside the first ambulance, Horatio tries to pretend that he is okay. Fortunately, one of the paramedics was standing near Horatio. Watching the ambulance carrying his sister drive off, Horatio collapses to the ground hard. Horatio managed to save his sister, but he went into shock.

In the ambulance, Renee finally comes to and opens her eyes. When she sits bolt upright without any warning signs, the paramedics have to push her back down.

They attempt to calm her down by telling her, "Lieutenant Caine is in the ambulance behind us."

When Renee hears that her brother is okay, she calmly lays back down and accepts the attention of the medical staff.

Getting to the hospital, Renee is rushed into the trauma room. Once in the trauma room, the doctors order x-rays of Renee's head and chest.

When the medical staff sees her x-rays, they are in complete shock. How can anyone survive the injuries that she obviously endured?

They never saw someone with as many metal plates and screws in their skull before. Every bone in her skull had at least one plate and a dozen or more screws in it.

Her chest x-rays revealed that she had broken all of her ribs at some point in time. Given the scar tissues that formed around the fractures, the doctors determine that all the breaks had occurred eight to ten months before.

The attending staff is impressed with this small Marine and MDPD officer. She was obviously a survivor and a fighter.

The new X-rays show that she re-broke four ribs and partially collapsed her left lung. The doctors just stabilize the broken ribs. She still needs surgery to repair and re-inflate her collapsed lung.

Horatio arrived shortly after his sister. He needs to have the .223 bullet removed from his shoulder. The slug failed to go through his body since it had already traveled through the truck's door and seat when it entered his right shoulder.

When he got out of surgery, he calls Pride. They had the suspect in sight, but he got away.

"Pride, its Horatio. Renee and I were a crash. We were pursuing the suspect when someone in the back seat of his Jeep opened fire on us. I got shot, and Renee flipped her truck."

"Renee hit her head hard. I got us outright when her truck exploded."

Pride was just glad that Horatio and Renee are okay. He knows that his team will get the suspect sooner or later.

The more the suspect fights and tries to get away, the more and more Pride and his team want to take the suspect down. Now it had become very personal to Pride. By this time, he is very fond of both Renee and Horatio.

While Horatio and Renee were both still in the hospital, Pride sent Gregorio to bring Echo to the hospital and LaSalle to the crash site.

Hannah brought Sebastian with him to help collect possible evidence to definitely connect their suspect to the crash.

Approaching the crash site, neither Hannah nor Sebastian could believe that one person survived, let alone both passengers.

The once Hunter Green Shiny truck was now a blackened burned-out shell. The fire burned hot and destroyed everything.

A week after Horatio and Renee are released from the hospital, the two settle into staying at a local nine-story hotel.

Renee had not yet been cleared to return to the field, but Horatio was. This meant that Horatio had to leave his sister at the hotel while he continued to work the case.


	9. Chapter: Stop Doing This to Yourself

Not being allowed out in the field frustrated Renee to no end. She can't do still. She can't just stand on the sidelines and not do anything.

Ever since Renee was little, when she would get bored, she would make up things to do. This time she took to taking things apart and making other things out of the pieces. She was currently playing with the pieces of a flashlight and an old stun gun.

The hotel security officers found her on the roof several times, so they gave her a key. She used to work for the NOPD, and NCIS Senior Agent Dwayne Pride vouched for her.

Renee would use her key every night. She could be found on the roof with her legs dangling over the edge every night. Renee loves to go up on the roof to watch the sunset. She had done this every night for two full weeks. Horatio is very nervous seeing his sister on the edge of the roof.

The hotel itself is near the local amusement park by the roller coaster. After a long day searching for the killer, Horatio went to check on his sister. He had not heard from her for some hours.

Using his key, he lets himself into her adjacent room. Opening the door, he was unnerved by the eerie silence.

"Nae… Nae… You awake?" Horatio asks the room. Turning on the light, he was shocked to see Echo sleeping on the bed, and Renee was nowhere to be seen.

He had noticed a gutted flashlight, wire stripper, wire cutter, and pieces of a stun gun. His sister was nowhere to be found in the room.

When he realized what time it was, he knew where his sister was. He headed to the roof. Getting to the roof access door, he saw that she had propped it open with a trash can.

Walking through the roof door, he slowly approached his sister. She was sitting down on the edge of the rooftop watching the sunset.

Sitting with her feet dangling off. Horatio calls her name to get her attention before he sits down next to her. He didn't want to startle his sister.

With Horatio still on his feet, Renee starts to stand. At that time, she begins to slip. Horatio grabs her wrists and has her in his hands before she falls. By this time, Horatio Is lying flat on his stomach.

Renee is hanging off of the roof, scrambling to get up when she slips again. Renee still had her heavy over-sized backpack with all of her backup weapons, a jacket, and extra ammo on her back.

Lying on his stomach Horatio starts to slide towards the edge a little. Renee knows that if she falls off of the roof with Horatio holding her wrists, she will take her brother with her over the edge.

Knowing Horatio was not willing to let go; he needed to break free. She would fall the ninety feet to the ground. Rene hoped that the twenty-foot angled roof twenty feet below along with her backpack and the hotel's canopy would be enough of a cushion to break her fall.

Renee using all the added weight from her backpack to push off of the wall with everything that she has. The backpacks added weight gives her the right amount of leverage to break free from her brother's grip.

The instant his sister breaks free from his grip, Horatio jumps to his feet. He can't remember how he got downstairs. He was on the ground, looking up at his sister before he knows what is happening.

Renee lands on the angled roof of the building twenty feet below where she fell from hard. She got knocked unconscious on impact. Renee slid down the steep angle unexpectedly fast on her stomach. Hitting a skylight, she gets flipped to her back.

As she went over the edge of the gutter, Renee opens her eyes. Going feet first but sideways, she braced for the fall. Much to her shock, Renee's backpack gets snagged on the gutter.

Again Renee was hanging suspended in the air. To her horror, she feels herself slipping out of her backpack as she is suspended fifty feet in the air.

As she feels the arms straps from her backpack slip, Renee frantically tries to get something out of her back pocket.

By this time, Horatio is out front on the ground, and again he is watching his sister fall, and again, he is powerless to help her.

Quickly she is again falling through the air. The only thing that might slow her fall enough for her to survive was the building's canopy over the entrance.

Nobody on the ground knows what is happening above them. Renee never makes a sound as she falls. Horatio was out on the ground and cleared the area around the canopy.

Since Horatio clears the area when she lands, nobody else got hurt. As soon as the dust settles, Horatio runs to tend to his sister.

The first thing he does is check her for a pulse. He is able to breathe a sigh of relief when he realizes that his sister still has a heartbeat, but it is dangerously high.

While Horatio tends to his sister, a bystander calls 911.

"911 emergency, what's your emergency?"

"I'm at the hotel near the amusement park. You know the one by the roller coaster. Some woman fell off the building onto the ground."

"Does she have a pulse?"

"I don't know someone is doing chest compressions."

"Don't move her. The paramedics are on their way."

It only took a few minutes for the paramedics to get to the scene.

When the medics get there, they ask Horatio a few questions.

"What happened? Is she alive?"

Questions that Horatio answers very quickly.

"She slipped off the top. She slid down the angled roof and fell through the canopy. I checked her for a heartbeat. It's there, but it is way too fast."

When one of the paramedics hears she has a heartbeat, she rushes to Renee's side to feel for herself.

"She has tachycardia, bring the portable defibrillator."

The other medic pulls out the portable defibrillator and charges to three hundred joules. They attempt to shock Renee's heart back into a normal sinus rhythm.

Renee's body jerks with the shock, and the medics check the heart rate. What the paramedics see confuses them. They see a normal beat then their patient is tachycardic again.

They try again to get a normal sinus rhythm, but again they get a single normal heartbeat, and her heart is tachycardic.

The first paramedic pulls out her penlight to check their patient's eyes response to light. It is at this time she realizes her patient's eyes were twitching, but why were they twitching.

Grabbing the arm of one of the paramedics, Horatio remembered why his sister was on the roof. When she was on the edge, she had been holding something in her right hand. Where is her right hand?

Looking down at their patient, the paramedics and Horatio slowly and carefully roll her over to her side. Her right hand is still in her back pocket. As carefully as Horatio can, he gently pulls his sister's hand out of her pocket, and out from under her lower back.

What they see makes it clear why they were not able to get the normal sinus rhythm to stay. A stripped wire was wrapped tightly around her hand. Both ends of the wire are attached to the positive and negative poles of a deconstructed stun gun.

The stun gun's on switch had been jammed, so it was a live wire. Renee had been messing with the voltage and got her stun gun to emit 80-100 mA on a continuous basis.

When the paramedics shocked her heart, the stun gun would just mess it up again. Quickly Horatio pulls out his sister's Swiss Army knife from her left cargo pants pocket and cuts one side of the wire, which effectively stops the slow electrocution of his sister.

Without a word, one of the paramedics recharges the defibrillator and shocks Renee's heart back into normal sinus rhythm.

Since his sister is still not conscious, Horatio has his sister taken to the hospital to check her out since she had fallen ninety feet.

Renee had fallen a great distance and had been electrocuted, so even if she had been awake, he would insist that she goes to the hospital.

Loading Renee into the ambulance, Horatio doesn't let his sister out of his sight. As she is taken into the trauma room, Horatio calls Pride and his team.

"Pride, It's Horatio. We are at the hospital again."

"What... what happened?"

"I went back to the hotel to check on Renee, and I found her on the roof. Well, she slipped and fell off the building."

"She fell off the top, falling down twenty feet, slid down the angled roof of the lower building, fell fifty additional feet, and through the hotel's entrance canopy."

"Apparently, when she was on the roof, she had been taking apart her old stun gun."

"Halfway down, she put her hand in her back pocket, and her hand got caught around a stripped wire connected to the jacked-up stun gun. It put her into a coma."

Pride doesn't say a word when Horatio tells him what happened.

"I'll be at the hospital as fast as I can," Pride tells his fellow officer.

Renee was in a coma from her fall. Luckily for her, she didn't break her back, and she survived the fall.

Her coma lasts about two weeks. By that time, Horatio had Gregorio go to the hotel and bring Echo to the hospital.

Horatio and Pride were both sitting in her room at the hospital. The two officers had fallen asleep on chairs that the nurses had brought them.

Echo was the first to notice that Renee was awake. Jumping up on the bed, she woke the officers up.

Quickly Horatio reaches over and tries to pull the canine off of the hospital bed. It took a few minutes for both Horatio and Pride to realize that Renee was awake.

"Welcome back, Sweetheart. You really need to stop doing this to yourself," Horatio tells his sister through a weak smile. He tells her that after he breathed a sigh of relief.

"You're awake… You are one tough and dare I say, indestructible, officer," Pride tells his friend.

The hospital keeps Renee admitted for a week after she came out of her coma. By this time, Renee was driving the staff crazy. She was always trying to escape and get out of the hospital.

When Renee finally gets discharged from the hospital, Horatio decides that his sister is going to go with him to NCIS headquarters. They can keep an eye on her at the HQ. She can help Patton with research, and she can help Wade in the Coroner's office.

Renee can't be left unattended or alone. She can't be trusted not to do something stupid.

"What happened on the hotel roof?" Horatio asks his sister with Pride and his team in the room.

"Well, I was trying to stand, and I slipped. You grabbed me by the wrists. You were on your stomach, but I could feel you struggling to keep your grip. I felt you start to slip."

"The weight of me and my backpack was going to get both of us killed. I knew that you would never be willing to let go."

"I'm sorry, but I needed to break free. So I kicked off of the wall, and it broke your grip. I hoped that the angled roof and the canopy combined with the contents of my backpack would be enough to break my fall."

"To my horror, my backpack got snagged on the gutter of the angled roof. My straps start to slip."

"At that moment, I realize that I needed to get my little experiment out of my back pocket."

"I guess that the wire got stripped when I landed on the angled roof and slid down."

"Because when I put my hand in my pocket, I feel a painful and continuous electrical shock."

"That is why I never made a sound I couldn't even if I wanted too."

"My heart was racing. I remember hearing my heartbeat pounding in my head."

"I don't know what happened after that. I don't remember landing or anything that happened after I put my hand in my pocket."

"What happened?" Renee finishes her explanation with a question addressed to the room rather than her brother directly.

Horatio answers his sister's question. "Sweetheart, when you landed, I realized that your heart was beating way to fast, so I start compressions."

"The paramedics arrive and try to shock your heart back into normal sinus rhythm."

"It works for only a second before your heart races again. So they try again and again."

"Each time they shock your heart, it works for a few seconds, then your heart races again."

"I remembered what I saw in your room and what I saw on the roof."

"We pulled your right hand out from under you, and it was tangled up in a stripped wire connected to a live stun gun."

"I pulled out your knife and cut one end of the wire. The medics tried again."

"They get a normal sinus rhythm quickly, and they rush you to the hospital."

"You were in a coma for two weeks. I'm just glad you're okay," Horatio finally finished his answers his sister's question.

Shortly after Renee was released from the hospital, she was back in the field despite her brother's objections.

By this time, Renee, Horatio, Pride, and his team were willing to try anything. They were willing to reach out to other agencies. It was time to bring in the big guns.


	10. Chapter: Bringing in the Big Guns

Renee did have some resources that until now had remained un-utilized. She knew the leader of the Cajun Navy so she could ask if some of the members could keep an eye out for any unusual activities in the area. If anyone could know all of the bayou, it would be the Cajun Navy.

Renee called in a few favors and was able to get into contact with the group's leader. The leader was more than happy to put the word out.

The leader went even further and gave the members some advice. "If you see the suspect do not, and I repeat, do not approach him."

"He is armed and extremely dangerous. He has killed a lot of people, including members of the Navy, Marines, as well as NOPD officers. He even tried to kill my long-time friend Renee."

The Cajun Navy would drive their boats and airboats up and down the various waterways that make up the bayou looking for any boat or person that shouldn't be there.

Since the navy were just members of the community, they knew all of the locals. They would know who should and who shouldn't be there.

This setup worked quite well until some of the members failed to check-in at their specified time. When they failed to check in on time, their boss called it into Renee and the team of NCIS agents that she was working with.

Patton tracked the pair's satellite phone down to a square mile before he lost the signal. Getting to the location where they lost connection, Renee and Horatio began to scan the area.

Seeing a plume of thick black smoke, they followed it to the remains of the missing Cajun Navy member's flat bottom boat.

Someone who they could only assume was the suspect had burned the boat. The pair of officers found no sign of the missing men, so it looked like the men were still alive.

But where were they? Did the suspect take them, and if he did, where did he take them?

Horatio and Renee called in the burning boat and missing men to the NCIS command center.

With Pride manning the command center, he sent more agents to help search the area for any signs of the missing men or the suspect. Having more agents coming to help search, let Horatio and Renee send for Echo.

She knew the dog could track anyone or anything. With a piece of the missing men's clothing and a piece of clothing that they had managed to get from the compound after the suspect blew it up.

Renee just needed to get Echo to get the smell of whoever Renee wanted to track down and to tell Echo, "seek." Giving the dog the command sent Echo into a smelling frenzy.

Tracking over water is almost impossible for most dogs to do, but Echo's breed was created in Louisiana to track wild boar over the bayou.

For Echo, it was easy to do. Smelling around the area, it didn't take long for the dog to get on the trail of either the suspect or the missing Cajun Navy members.

Renee didn't know who her canine was tracking, but she trusted the dog to tell her if she was in danger.

Echo has a history of saving her partner from danger. Whether it was Renee or even Horatio and James, the dog would do whatever was needed to keep her partner safe. So when Renee heard Echo let out a low growl, she knew something was up.

Right after Renee heard Echo growl, a bullet missed her head by inches. She and her brother were under fire by who they thought was the suspect.

Coming around the bend in the river, Renee and Horatio came across a shocking scene. The pair by chance ran into one of the missing Cajun Navy members.

Pulling the bleeding man into the flat bottom boat, the two of them couldn't wait to find out what happened to him and his buddy. Quickly they asked the man if he was the one shooting. Quietly he answered, "yes, I thought you were the suspect."

As soon as the injured Cajun Navy member could talk, they proceeded to question him. They needed to find his buddy and the suspect since both men were still missing in action.

While sitting at the bottom of the boat, the newly found man who's name was Mason Lowell began answering the police officer's questions.

"Well, Garrett McKenna and I were driving the boat down the bayou when we saw a suspicious boat. The house that we saw the boat had been abandoned since Katrina. I guess that someone saw us since they started to shoot at us."

"We thought that we were inconspicuous by pretending to be hunters, but I guess that they saw right through our charade."

"One bullet hit me in the shoulder, and I fell overboard, where I threw my rifle into the water. I continued to hear gunshots, so I played dead."

"Whoever it was that was shooting at us came up to check if I was dead, but I guess that I fooled him because he left. I don't know what really happened to Garrett since when the suspect left, I never saw Garrett again."

"I think the suspect took him hostage since I didn't hear him hit the water or fall down into the boat." The victim had finished his testimony.

After hearing what the new victim said, they wanted first to get him the medical treatment that he needed. Then, they wanted to find out where the house was.

The duo knew that the odds were against them, but maybe they could get some evidence as to where the suspect went and, by chance, find some clues as to what happened to Garrett.

Grabbing a map of the bayou, Horatio asked Mason to point out where the house was at. The home was located deep in the bayou. So deep that people almost never visit.

The only ones that ever visited the house to check on the resident were members of the Cajun Navy. They would come to visit about twice a month just to check on the elderly homeowner.

Before Katrina hit members of the Cajun Navy came to evacuate the homeowner, but they found him dead from a heart attack. So the Cajun Navy knew that no one should be there since the owner had no family.

When Horatio and Renee approached the supposedly abandoned house, they did find signs that they had just missed the person that was there.

They also found a small pool of blood against the back wall. Horatio could only assume that the blood was from Garrett, the missing Cajun Navy member.

Mason told Horatio and Renee that his buddy Garrett did have an Emergency Personal Response Beacon. The EPERB works like a reverse GPS unit. It sends a signal out rather than receiving a signal. All the members of the Cajun Navy had one on them at all times.

Renee and Horatio had managed to track the suspect to a huge abandoned shrimp processing plant. The plant had not been used since the Deep Horizon accident. The oil spill decimated the local shrimp population, which led to the company going bankrupt and being forced to close its door.

Mason, the Cajun Navy member that had been shot by the suspect, described the boat as a three-gallon gas tank since it was a Zodiac with a 10 HP outboard motor. A tank that size as a rule of thumb can run three hours on a full three-gallon gas tank.

That gave Patton a one and a half-hour radius in which the boat can travel. So he mapped out a one and a half hour area around the house that the Cajun Navy members had spotted him at earlier.

Patton then turned on a drone that he had to scan the area on the map, looking for heat signatures. He scanned and scanned the area looking for a hot location that was putting out a large amount of heat.

This strategy did eventually work when the drone came across a large, abandoned shrimp processing plant.

Neither Horatio nor Renee wanted to put anyone else at risk, so the two of them went in alone to investigate. As they got close too the building, they were soon under fire from at least seventy-five people.

It took them about an hour to make their way from the boat outside to being inside the processing plant.

During the course of the firefight, Horatio and Renee got separated when Renee attempted to flank the suspect. The firefight was very intense since the suspect had close to seventy-five subordinated shooting the MDPD officers.

While technically outgunned, both Renee and her brother have an impeccable aim. They hit more than they miss. Renee never missed and killed everyone that she shot at, and Horatio killed just about everyone that he shot at. With twenty-one rounds in his Sig Horatio ended up killing fifteen gunmen. The shots fired slowly dwindled from seventy-five down to five, not including the suspect.

By this time, Horatio was out of ammo, and he forgot to grab his back up weapon. Since he left his house on a road trip, he really didn't think that he would need to have his back up weapon.

Renee, however, given her history of people always trying to kill her, she never goes anywhere without both her back up weapon and at least four full extra magazines for her Sig Sauer.

She had to get a replacement Sig since the suspect still had hers from when she was caught sneaking onto the suspect's compound. The Sig that the suspect had possession of had been the Sig that saw Renee through fourteen years in the Marines, three years on the border, and now three years with MDPD. Her mother had gotten her the firearm when she graduated from Marine boot camp.

She had four full magazines on her ammo belt and thigh bags along with one in the gun. She also always kept a bullet in the chamber. That policy of keeping one in the chamber had saved Renee's life on multiple occasions. In total, she had fifty rounds in the magazines and one in the chambers.

With Horatio's twenty-one rounds, they were evenly matched since the bad guys had a really bad aim. But since Horatio forgot his back up, it was down to Renee to take out her Kimber Micro that was chambered in .380 ACP out and take out the remaining five bad guys and shoot the suspect.

She really wanted just to wound him since they still needed to find the women and young girls that he was trafficking and the missing Cajun Navy member.

While the bad guys were busy reloading their AK-47's, Renee stood up and took them out one at a time, not missing one. It was now down to the suspect and Renee. With one round left, she couldn't miss. When her gun jammed, she had to think fast.

By this time, they were both out of ammo, and therefore they were unarmed. Renee, however, still had the SEAL dive knife that Gibbs had given her a few months before.

Renee had been training at knife throwing since she got the knife. She thought that if she was going to carry around a large knife, she better be proficient at using it. The knife was never off of her thigh.

Renee motioned to her brother that she was going to flank the suspect and hopefully take him down without anyone else getting killed.

They really needed to take him in alive since other people's lives were in danger. Renee snuck around the back of the abandoned fishing shack to the busted down door.

Renee really tried only to injure the suspect, but he made a move towards her brother. The war-hardened police officer was in fear for her brother's life, so she threw the knife. Her reaction was more reflex than anything. The blade of the knife sank deep into the suspect's chest.

With the blading sticking out of his chest, he fell onto his back and was bleeding out on the floor of the gigantic abandoned fishing shack's floor.

When Renee threw the knife, it punctured the suspect's lung making it impossible for the suspect to talk so she couldn't ask him where the missing women are.

They had no clue how to find the women and girls, along with the missing Cajun Navy member Garrett.

When the suspect died, Renee searched him to clear him from any weapons. At that time, Renee located her Sig Sauer P-226 that the suspect had taken when Renee had been caught in the suspect's compound.

Renee was buried alive, and the suspect had taken her gun. That gun was a gift from her mom when she had graduated from Marine boot camp. It saw through years as a Marine, time at the border not to mention her years in MDPD. She loved that gun very much.


	11. Chapter: Great Now What

Chapter: 15

Great Now What

Now that their suspect is dead, they need to find a way to locate the missing woman and the missing Cajun Navy member.

When she ran out of ammo, it scared her to no end. No sooner than she got back to HQ, she went and bought a Colt Cobra. A Cobra is a mini .38 special mini revolver. This was to be her back up to her back up.

They still need to find Garrett and the missing women. Not much is known about Garrett, so Patton did a deep dive into the man. He came back with some information that was very surprising to Renee.

The missing Cajun Navy man is the half brother to the breeder that Renee knows and the breeder of both Echo and the new puppy. The one that Horatio and Renee were coming to New Orleans to bring back to Miami to train as a forensic detection dog.

Renee had called the breeder to tell him that Renee had Horatio had been called in on a case in New Orleans, and they would be late in picking up the puppy. The breeder had a different last name, so Renee would never have made the connection.

Renee knows that the only way to get to the breeder was by boat. She also knew that the breeder would never leave his house if he had puppies. She and her brother would have to take Pride out into the bayou to talk to the breeder. Luckily Renee knew the way to the breeder since it would never show up on a map since there are no street names or even streets in the first place.

Renee still had connections in the area, so she had boats at her disposal. One of her friends from her days as a Marine had a TRACKER GRIZZLY 2072 CC. Her friend's boat was a very long one, so it was big enough for Renee, Echo, Horatio, Pride, and his team of agents to all fit since it can fit nine people.

It did take a while to find the breeders place since it had been several years since she had been there to pick up Echo. Renee did know the breeder since she was in the Marines, and she was stationed close by the breeders.

That is probably why she knew that it would be safest if she goes to the door alone since she knows her friend was prone to shoot first and ask questions later.

As she approached the door, she quickly knocked on the door and announced who she was.

"Jack… It's Renee Kerrigan. I'm here with some NCIS agents. We're here to talk about your brother, Garrett. I brought Echo too. Please open up. We really need to talk to you."

Without warning, the door opens to reveal a man holding a Browning BAR on the agents.

The man asked Renee a question that surprised her.

"Do you vouch for these men?" A question that she answered with an adamant and fervent, "yes."

Followed quickly by a "that is my brother kindly stop pointing that gun at him."

Echo, seeing the gun pointed at someone she felt was family, the canine quickly jumped out at Jack and was about to sink her teeth into the man's arm when Horatio called the dog off. When Echo heard Horatio calling her off of the attack, she obeyed instantly.

Echo had been standing next to Gregorio when she had seen someone pointing a gun at her family. Instinctively she got between the gun and her family and was growling and snarling at the gunman.

Hearing Echo growl and her brother calling Echo back, Renee stepped up, telling her partner, "Easy girl… It's okay… Jack is putting his gun down now."

She turned to face the breeder who lowered his gun and laid it beside the front door just outside as he walked back inside.

Inviting the team inside to talk about his half brother who he didn't even know was missing.

"Garrett… I haven't spoken to him for a long time. Not since he got back from the teams. Why are you asking about him?"

Judging by the confused look, he was getting from Renee and the others. No one knew that he was a former NAVY SEAL. The breeder continues talking.

"He served under a different name. His birth name is different than what everyone calls him. His birth name is Jakob Garrett McKenna. No one ever called him Jakob except Uncle Sam. He preferred to be called Garrett. He was a Master Chief Petty Officer with the SEALs."

With this new piece of information, Pride took over the questioning. After introducing himself and his team to Jack.

"My name is Senior Agent Dwayne Pride, and this is agent LaSalle, Gregorio, and Sebastian we are with NCIS."

"When was the last time that you talked to your brother?"

"It was after the first body connected to that drug dealer who was using the bayou to disappear in. I told him not to go looking for him and that the feds would find him, but he never listened to me. That is why he joined to Cajun Navy so he would have back up if the need arises."

"I'll tell you this if he is kidnapped he will kill his way out and he will protect any innocent with him. He will contact you, and you will never find him if he is trying to disappear anywhere," Jack tells Pride and his team.

Jack then turns to look at Renee before he asks her a question.

"Do you want to meet the puppy while you are here? I know that you cant take the puppy until you solve the case, and the pup is more than welcome to stay until then."

Renee adamantly nods her heads, yes.

Without another word, Jack calls, "Pups."

Everyone then hears the sound of at least a dozen paws running down the hall. Six half-grown dogs come sprinting to the group of people. Jack didn't need to point out the puppy. The puppy was the reverse color pattern as Echo, and there was only one pup that color.

Renee points the puppy out to Horatio and asks him what he thinks and what would he call him.

Horatio looks from the dog to his sister and back again. I've never seen a dog in those colors before. He's beautiful. Well, based on what we do, I'd say Patriot. You know Patty for short.

Nodding to each other, they tell the breeder that he is perfect and that his name is Patriot.

Patriot was busy playing with his new sister Echo. Jack tells Renee that Echo and Patriot were half-siblings having the same mother. With the pups all playing together and with Echo, the entire group jump when they hear a loud, deep bay of a hound.

Turning around to face the hall, they see who made the bark. It was a beautiful blue brown Catahoula Leopard Dog. The pups all run to her and follow her back down the hall. Echo even jumped and actually hid behind Renee's legs.

Renee looks up at Jack and only says one word, "mom." A question that Jack answers with a nod, yes.

As the team walks out of the house, they process all the information that they had just heard. When they got back to HQ, they have Patton run Garrett's whole name through their database.

What Patton comes back with was more than encouraging. Jakob Garrett McKenna was a hand to hand combat expert. He was also very adept at working in the swamplands of Louisiana and Alabama.

The team had no idea that deep in the bayou, Garrett was working up a plan to break out of where he was being kept and rescuing the women.

He knew that he could since he also lives by Gibbs' rule #9 Never go anywhere without a knife. Despite being searched by the suspect and his underlings, Garrett had some knives that had managed to go undetected this whole time.

Garrett had a knife hidden in both his belt buckle and two in the lining of his boots. They weren't long, but they were long enough to do some damage.

Garrett had noticed that the number of guards had gone from twelve to six over the last couple of days. He knew something was off with the guards. He was just biding his time and find out as much information as possible to figure out where the women were being held.

Garrett noticed the number of boats coming in and out had gone from about five a day down to two a day. He knew at this rate he would have to act soon. Garrett managed to pick the lock on his door with the Bobby pin. He always had one or two hidden in the bottom of his boots. With the lock picked, he snuck out to do a reconnaissance mission to gather information on how many guns and how many boats and where the women were.

He found a cargo container that was being guarded by six armed men he deduced that the women were being held inside that particular container. With this new piece of information, he snuck back into the shed that he was being held in.

His guard was none the wiser to the temporary jailbreak. Garrett knew that he needed to act fast, so when the sun was going down, he again snuck out, but this time, he cut the fuel lines to four of the boats, and using the gas tanks of the boats he rigged several makeshift bombs. He was going to use the bombs as a distraction so that he could get the women out when the bad guys were investigating the explosions.

The bombs had the desired effect, and the women's cargo container was left with only one guard. Being a SEAL, Garrett easily got behind the guard without the guard realizing until Garrett had him in a sleeper hold and was choking him out.

With the guard knocked out, Garrett grabbed the gun and opened the container. Shining the guns light on the women, he calmed them down quickly and led them out to the boat that he had left work.

There were seven women and children in the cargo container, and now seven women and children were with Garrett in the flat bottom boat. Garrett did know the waters like the back of his hands, but he also didn't have a full three gallons in the tank, so he had a limited range that they could stay in the boat before they would all have to get into the water and swim for it.

The explosion that Garrett had rigged ended up being seen by a night fisherman who called it into NOPD, who then called NCIS. By morning the island was being swarmed by NCIS and NOPD SWAT team.

They found the body of the guard that Garrett had choked out along with the rest of the guards. There was no way off of the island when Garrett sabotaged the boats. Taking the only boat that had an intact fuel line, he stranded the guards.

The guards were the only ones that NCIS was able to take in alive since everyone died that was at the processing plant that Renee and Horatio had gone to.

Now they just needed to find Garrett and the missing women. The island was about ten miles from Echos breeder. So Garrett was heading to a location that he knew oh so well.

Renee and Horatio were surprised to get a phone call from Jack.

"Renee, Jakob is in the other room. He just showed up with seven women and children. He's not making any sense when he talks. Just please come with your team."

Hanging up the phone, Renee runs into the other room.

"I got a lead… Garrett showed up with the women and children at Jack's house. Come on, let's go. I'll call my friend with the boat."

As the boat pulls up to Jacks floating dock, Renee and the team get out. Being a Marine, Renee led the group of investigators to the door.

"Master Chief Petty Officer Jacob McKenna, I'm Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Renee Kerrigan. Can you please come out and talk to us. I really need to talk to you and to Sabrina Mancini. It's about her brother Navy Commander Jeff Mancini."

The door opened up with Garrett and Sabrina standing there. Renee now needed to do the one thing that no law enforcement officer or military personnel ever get used to. She needed to make a death notification."

"Sabrina Mancini, I hate to tell you this, but your brother was found dead a while ago. He died trying to get you out. The police wouldn't listen to him when he went there about you being missing and how he feared that you were trafficked."

"His death got NCIS on the case, and we got everyone involved in both your kidnapping and your brother's death. I'm so sorry for your loss."

Sabrina just collapsed in tears. The teenager was now completely alone. She had lost the only family that she had. To be honest, her friends Emily and Ivy, were also alone, so they were in it together.

"Garrett, we just wanted to tell you that your safe and the girls are safe. We also wanted to ask you how you got everyone to safety. We found the hidden base where you all were held by the smoke from the IED's that you rigged."

"Well, we were in the one boat I left intact. We had managed to get six miles out. I knew my brother's place was ten miles. I recognized landmarks along the way. I also knew the best route to remain undetected. Taking that route, the women, children, and I had to swim. With four miles to go, I knew that one of the children couldn't swim that far, so I had her put her arms around my neck. We had to swim and float that last four miles.

While technically the case was closed, Renee asked Pride to not forget about Sabrina and her friends and to make sure that he checked upon them from time to time. A request that Pride had no problem keeping.


End file.
